The training of the human plant

ilifornia

ional

ility

THE

TRAINING OF THE
HUMAN PLANT

THE

TRAINING OF THE
HUMAN PLANT

BY

LUTHER BURBANK

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1907

Copyright, 1906, 1907, by
THE CENTUBY Co.

Published April, 1907

THE DE VINNE PRESS

//XT DiV

IS

DEDICATED

TO THE

SIXTEEN MILLION

PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILDREN OF AMERICA
AND TO THE

UNTOLD MILLIONS
UNDER OTHER SKIES

CONTENTS

PAGE

i THE MINGLING OF RACES .... 3
n THE TEACHINGS OF NATURE . . .11
m DIFFERENTIATION IN TRAINING . .19

iv SUNSHINE, GOOD AIR AND NOURISH-
ING FOOD 30

v DANGERS 45

vi MARRIAGE OF THE PHYSIC ALLY. UNFIT 58

ii HEREDITY — PREDESTINATION —

TRAINING 67

vm GROWTH 76

EX ENVIRONMENT THE ARCHITECT OF

HEREDITY . . 81

x CHARACTER 87

xi FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES . . 93

THE TRAINING OF THE
HUMAN PLANT

THE TRAINING OF THE
HUMAN PLANT

THE MINGLING OF RACES

DURING the course of many years of
investigation into the plant life
of the world, creating new forms, modi-
fying old ones, adapting others to new
conditions, and blending still others, I
have constantly been impressed with
the similarity between the organization
and development of plant and human
life. While I have never lost sight of
the principle of the survival of the fit-
test and all that it implies as an expla-
8

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

nation of the development and progress
of plant life, I have come to find in the
crossing of species and in selection,
wisely directed, a great and powerful
instrument for the transformation of
the vegetable kingdom along lines that
lead constantly upward. The crossing
of species is to me paramount. Upon
it, wisely directed and accompanied by
a rigid selection of the best and as rigid
an exclusion of the poorest, rests the
hope of all progress. The mere cross-
ing of species, unaccompanied by selec-
tion, wise supervision, intelligent care,
and the utmost patience, is not likely to
result in marked good, and may result
in vast harm. Unorganized effort is
often most vicious in its tendencies.

Before passing to the consideration
of the adaptation of the principles of
4

THE MINGLING OF RACES

plant culture and improvement in a
more or less modified form to the hu-
man being, let me lay emphasis on the
opportunity now presented in the
United States for observing and, if we
are wise, aiding in what I think it fair
to say is the grandest opportunity ever
presented of developing the finest race
the world has ever known out of the
vast mingling of races brought here by
immigration.

By statistical abstract on immigra-
tion, prepared by the Bureau of Statis-
tics of the Department of Commerce
and Labor in Washington, I find, that,
in the year 1904, 752,864 immigrants
came into the United States, assigned
to more than fifty distinct nationalities.
It will be worth while to look carefully
at this list. It shows how widely sepa-
5

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

rated geographically, as well as ethno-
logically, is the material from which we
are drawing in this colossal example of
the crossing of species:

Austria-Hungary, includ-
ing Bohemia, Hungary,
and other Austria save

Poland 117,156

Belgium 3,976

Denmark ...... 8,525

France ...... 9,406

Germany 46,380

Greece . * -' 11,343

Italy . 193,296

Netherlands 4,916

Norway 23,808

Poland . . ". . . . . 6,715

Rumania ... . . . 7,087

Russia 145,141

Spain 3,996

Sweden 27,763

Switzerland 5,023

Carried forward . . 614,531

THE MINGLING OF RACES

Brought forward . . 614,531
* Turkey in Europe . . 5,669

England 38,620

Ireland 36,142

Scotland . . . .V 11,092

Wales 1,730

Europe not specified . . 143

Total Europe . ~ ~ 707,927

British North America . 2,837

Mexico 1,009

Central America ... 714

West Indies and Miguelon 10,193
South America .... 1,667

Total America . . . 16,420

China 4,309

Japan 14,264

Other Asia 7,613

Total Asia . . . 26,186

Total Oceania . . 1,555

Total Africa . . ; 686

All other countries 90

Total Immigrants . 752,864

Includes Servia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro.

7

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

Study this list from any point of
view. Where has there been found a
broader opportunity for the working
out of these underlying principles?
Some of these immigrants will mate
with others of their own class, notably
the Jews, thus not markedly changing
the current ; many will unite with others
of allied speech; still others marry into
races wholly different from their own,
while a far smaller number will perhaps
find union with what we may call native
stock.

But wait until two decades have
passed, until there are children of age
to wed, and then see, under the changed
conditions, how widespread will be the
mingling. So from the first the for-
eign nations have been pouring into this
country and taking their part in this
vast blending.

8

THE MINGLING OF RACES

Now, just as the plant breeder al-
ways notices sudden changes and
breaks, as well as many minor modifi-
cations, when he joins two or more
plants of diverse type from widely sep-
arated quarters of the globe, — some-
times merging an absolutely wild strain
with one that, long over-civilized, has
largely lost virility, — and just as he
finds among the descendants a plant
which is likely to be stronger and better
than either ancestor, so may we notice
constant changes and breaks and modi-
fications going on about us in this vast
combination of races, and so may we
hope for a far stronger and better race
if right principles are followed, a mag-
nificent race, far superior to any pre-
ceding it. Look at the material on
which to draw! Here is the North,
powerful, virile, aggressive, blended
9

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

with the luxurious, ease-loving, more
impetuous South. Again you have the
merging of a cold phlegmatic tempera-
ment with one mercurial and volatile.
Still again the union of great native
mental strength, developed or undevel-
oped, with bodily vigor, but with infer-
ior mind. See, too, what a vast num-
ber of environmental influences have
been at work in social relations, in cli-
mate, in physical surroundings. Along
with this we must observe the merging
of the vicious with the good, the good
with the good, the vicious with the
vicious.

10

II

THE TEACHINGS OF NATURE

T ir TE are more crossed than any
V V other nation in the history of
the world, and here we meet the same
results that are always seen in a much-
crossed race of plants: all the worst as
well as all the best qualities of each are
brought out in their fullest intensities.
Right here is where selective environ-
ment counts. When all the necessary
crossing has been done, then comes the
work of elimination, the work of refin-
ing, until we shall get an ultimate prod-
uct that should be the finest race ever
known. The best characteristics of the
11

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

many peoples that make up this nation
will show in the composite: the finished
product will be the race of the future.

In my work with plants and flowers I
introduce color here, shape there, size or
perfume, according to the product de-
sired. In such processes the teachings
of nature are followed. Its great forces
only are employed. All that has been
done for plants and flowers by crossing,
nature has already accomplished for the
American people. By the crossings of
types, strength has in one instance been
secured; in another, intellectuality; in
still another, moral force. Nature
alone has done this. The work of
man's head and hands has not yet been
summoned to prescribe for the develop-
ment of a race. So far a preconceived
and mapped-out crossing of bloods
12

THE TEACHINGS OF NATURE

finds no place in the making of peoples
and nations. But when nature has al-
ready done its duty, and the crossing
leaves a product which in the rough dis-
plays the best human attributes, all that
is left to be done falls to selective en-
vironment.

But when two different plants have
been crossed, that is only the beginning.
It is only one step, however important ;
the great work lies beyond— the care,
the nurture, the influence of surround-
ings, selection, the separation of the best
from the poorest, all of which are em-
braced in the words I have used — selec-
tive environment.

How, then, shall the principles of
plant culture have any bearing upon the
development of the descendants of this
mighty mingling of races?
18

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

All animal life is sensitive to environ-
ment, but of all living things the child is
the most sensitive. Surroundings act
upon it as the outside world acts upon
the plate of the camera. Every possi-
ble influence will leave its impress upon
the child, and the traits which it in-
herited will be overcome to a certain
extent, in many cases being even more
apparent than heredity. The child is
like a cut diamond, its many facets re-
ceiving sharp, clear impressions not pos-
sible to a pebble, with this difference,
however, that the change wrought in the
child from the influences without be-
comes constitutional and ingrained. A
child absorbs environment. It is the
most susceptible thing in the world to
influence, and if that force be applied
rightly and constantly when the child is
14

THE TEACHINGS OF NATURE

in its most receptive condition, the effect
will be pronounced, immediate, and
permanent.

Where shall we begin? Just where
we begin with the plant, at the very be-
ginning. It has been said that the way
to reform a man is to begin with his
grandfather. But this is only a half-
truth; begin with his grandfather, but
begin with the grandfather when he is a
child. I find the following quoted
from the great kindergartner Froebel:

"The task of education is to assist natural
development toward its destined end.

"As the beginning gives a bias to the whole
after development, so the early beginnings of
education are of most importance."

While recognizing the good that has
been accomplished in the early kinder-

15

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

garten training of children, I must en-
ter a most earnest protest against
beginning education, as we commonly
use the word, at the kindergarten age.
No boy or girl should see the inside of a
school-house until at least ten years old.
I am speaking now of the boy or girl
who can be reared in the only place that
is truly fit to bring up a boy or a plant
— the country, the small town or the
country, the nearer to nature the better.
In the case of children born in the city
and compelled to live there, the tempta-
tions are so great, the life so artificial,
the atmosphere so like that of the hot-
house, that the child must be placed in
school earlier as a matter of safeguard-
ing.

But, some one asks, How can you ever
expect a boy to graduate from college
16

THE TEACHINGS OF NATURE

or university if his education does not
begin until he is ten years of age? He
will be far too old.

First I answer that the curse of mod-
ern child-life in America is over-educa-
tion. For the first ten years of this, the
most sensitive and delicate, the most pli-
able life in the world, I would prepare
it. The properly prepared child will
make such progress that the difference
in time of graduation is not likely to be
noticeable ; but, even if it should be a year
or two later, what real difference would
it make? Do we expect a normal plant
to begin bearing fruit a few weeks after
it is born? It must have time, ample
time, to be prepared for the work before
it. Above all else, the child must be a
healthy animal. I do not work with
diseased plants. They do not cure
2 17

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

themselves of disease. They only spread
disease among their fellows and die be-
fore their time.

18

Ill

DIFFERENTIATION IN TRAINING

I WISH to lay special stress upon the
absurdity, not to call it by a harsher
term, of running children through the
same mill in a lot, with absolutely no
real reference to their individuality. No
two children are alike. You cannot
expect them to develop alike. They
are different in temperament, in tastes,
in disposition, in capabilities, and yet
we take them in this precious early age,
when they ought to be living a life of
preparation near to the heart of nature,
and we stuff them, cram them, and
overwork them until their poor little

19

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

brains are crowded up to and beyond
the danger-line. The work of breaking
down the nervous systems of the chil-
dren of the United States is now well
under way. It is only when some one
breaks absolutely away from all prece-
dent and rule and carves out a new place
in the world that any substantial prog-
ress is ever made, and seldom is this
done by one whose individuality has
been stifled in the schools. So it is im-
perative that we consider individuality
in children in their training precisely as
we do in cultivating plants. Some chil-
dren, for example, are absolutely unfit
by nature and temperament for carry-
ing on certain studies. Take certain
young girls, for example, bright in
many ways, but unfitted by nature and
bent, at this early age at least, for the
20

DIFFERENTIATION IN TRAINING

study of arithmetic. Very early, — be-
fore the age of ten, in fact, — they are
packed into a room along with from
thirty to fifty others and compelled to
study a branch which, at best, they should
not undertake until they have reached
maturer years. Can one by any possible
cultivation and selection and crossing
compel figs to grow on thistles or apples
on a banana-tree? I have made many
varied and strange plant combinations
in the hope of betterment and still am at
work upon others, but one cannot hope
to do the impossible.

THE FIRST TEN YEARS

NOT only would I have the child reared

for the first ten years of its life in the

open, in close touch with nature, a bare-

21

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

foot boy with all that implies for physi-
cal stamina, but should have him reared
in love. But you say, How can you
expect all children to be reared in love?
By working with vast patience upon the
great body of the people, this great
mingling of races, to teach such of them
as do not love their children to love
them, to surround them with all the in-
fluences of love. This will not be uni-
versally accomplished to-day or to-mor-
row, and it may need centuries; but if
we are ever to advance and to have this
higher race, now is the time to begin the
work, this very day. It is the part of
every human being who comprehends
the importance of this to bend all his
energies toward the same end. Love
must be at the basis of all our work for
the race; not gush, not mere sentimen-

22

DIFFERENTIATION IN TRAINING

tality, but abiding love, that which out-
lasts death. A man who hates plants,
or is neglectful of them, or who has
other interests beyond them, could no
more be a successful plant-cultivator
than he could turn back the tides of the
ocean with his finger-tips. The thing
is utterly impossible. You can never
bring up a child to its best estate with-
out love.

BE HONEST WITH THE CHILD

THEN,, again, in the successful cultiva-
tion of plants there must be absolute
honesty. I mean this in no fanciful
way, but in the most practical and mat-
ter-of-fact fashion. You cannot at-
tempt to deceive nature or thwart her or
be dishonest with her in any particular

23

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

without her knowing it, without the
consequences coming back upon your
own head. Be honest with your child.
Do not give him a colt for his very own,
and then, when it is a three-year-old, sell
it and pocket the proceeds. It does not
provoke a tendency in children to fol-
low the Golden Rule, and seldom en-
hances their admiration and respect for
you. It is not sound business policy or
fair treatment; it is not honest. Bear
in mind that this child-life in these first
ten years is the most sensitive thing in
the world; never lose sight of that.
Children respond to ten thousand subtle
influences which would leave no more
impression upon a plant than they
would upon the sphinx. Vastly more
sensitive is it than the most sensitive
plant. Think of being dishonest with it !

24

DIFFERENTIATION IN TRAINING

Here let me say that the wave of
public dishonesty which seems to be
sweeping up over this country is chiefly
due to a lack of proper training — breed-
ing, if you will — in the formative years
of life. Be dishonest with a child,
whether it is your child or some other
person's child — dishonest in word or
look or deed, and you have started a
grafter. Grafting, or stealing, — for
that is the better word, — will never be
taken up by a man whose formative
years have been spent in an atmosphere
of absolute honesty. Nor can you be
dishonest with your child in thought.
The child reads your motives as no other
human being reads them. He sees into
your own heart. The child is the
purest, truest thing in the world. It is
absolute truth : that 's why we love chil-
25

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

dren. They know instinctively whether
you are true or dishonest with them in
thought as well as in deed; you cannot
escape it. The child may not always
show its knowledge, but its judgment
of you is unerring. Its life is stainless,
open to receive all impressions, just as
is the life of the plant, only far more pli-
ant and responsive to influences, and
to influences to which no plant is capa-
ble of being responsive. Upon the child
before the age of ten we have an unpar-
alleled opportunity to work; for no-
where else is there material so plastic.

TRAITS IN PLANTS AND BOYS

TEACH the child self-respect ; train it in

self-respect, just as you train a plant

into better ways. No self-respecting

26

DIFFERENTIATION IN TRAINING

man was ever a grafter. Make the boy
understand what money means, too,
what its value and importance. Do not
deal it out to him lavishly, but teach
him to account for it. Instil better
things into him, just as a plant-breeder
puts better characteristics into a plant.
Above all, bear in mind repetition, repe-
tition, the use of an influence over and
over again. Keeping everlastingly at
it, this is what fixes traits in plants — the
constant repetition of an influence until
at last it is irrevocably fixed and will not
change. You cannot afford to get dis-
couraged. You are dealing with some-
thing far more precious than any plant
—the priceless soul of a child.

27

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

KEEP OUT FEAR

AND, again, keep fear out that the child
may grow up to the end of the first ten-
year period and not learn what physical
fear is. Let him alone for that, if he is
a healthy normal child; he will find it
and profit by it. But keep out all fear
of the brutal things men have taught
children about the future. I believe
emphatically in religion. God made
religion, and man made theology, just
as God made the country, and man
made the town. I have the largest
sympathy for religion, and the largest
contempt I am capable of for a mislead-
ing theology. Do not feed children on
maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic
religion; give them nature. Let their

28

DIFFERENTIATION IN TRAINING

souls drink in all that is pure and sweet.
Rear them, if possible, amid pleasant
surroundings. If they come into the
world with souls groping in darkness,
let them see and feel the light. Do not
terrify them in early life with the fear
of an after-world. Never was a child
made more noble and good by the fear
of a hell. Let nature teach them the
lessons of good and proper living, com-
bined with an abundance of well-bal-
anced nourishment. Those children
will grow to be the best men and
women. Put the best in them by con-
tact with the best outside. They will
absorb it as a plant absorbs the sunshine
and the dew.

IV

SUNSHINE, GOOD AIR AND
NOURISHING FOOD

WE cannot carry a great plant-
breeding test to a successful
culmination at the end of a long period
of years without three things, among
many others, that are absolutely essen-
tial—sunshine, good air, and nourish-
ing food.

SUNSHINE

TAKE the first, both in its literal and

figurative sense — sunshine. Surround

the children with every possible cheer.

so

SUNSHINE

I do not mean to pamper them, to make
them weak; they need the winds, just as
the plants do, to strengthen them and
to make them self-reliant. If you want
your child to grow up into a sane, nor-
mal man, a good citizen, a support of
the state you must keep him in the sun-
shine. Keep him happy. You can-
not do this if you have a sour face your-
self. Smiles and laughter cost nothing.
Costly clothing, too fine to stand the
wear and tear of a tramp in the woods
or sliding down a haystack or a cellar
door, are a dead weight upon your child.
I believe in good clothes, good strong
serviceable clothes for young chil-
dren— clothes that fit and look well; for
they tend to mental strength, to self-
respect. But there are thousands of
parents who, not having studied the tre-
31

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

mendous problems of environmental
surroundings, and having no concep-
tion of the influence of these surround-
ings, fail to recognize the fact that
either an over-dressed or a poorly
dressed child is handicapped.

Do not be cross with the child; you
cannot afford it. If you are cultivat-
ing a plant, developing it into some-
thing finer and nobler, you must love it,
not hate it; be gentle with it, not abu-
sive; be firm, never harsh. I give the
plants upon which I am at work in a
test, whether a single one or a hundred
thousand, the best possible environ-
ment. So should it be with a child, if
you want to develop it in right ways.
Let the children have music, let them
have pictures, let them have laughter,
let them have a good time; not an idle

82

SUNSHINE

time, but one full of cheerful occupa-
tion. Surround them with all the beau-
tiful things you can. Plants should be
given sun and air and the blue sky ; give
them to your boys and girls. I do not
mean for a day or a month, but for all
the years. We cannot treat a plant
tenderly one day and harshly the next;
they cannot stand it. Remember that
you are training not only for to-day,
but for all the future, for all posterity.

FRESH AIK

To develop indoors, under glass, a race
of men and women of the type that I
believe is coming out of all this marvel-
ous mingling of races in the United
States is immeasurably absurd. There
must be sunlight, but even more is

33

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

needed, fresh, pure air. The injury
wrought to-day to the race by keeping
too young children indoors at school is
beyond the power of any one to esti-
mate. The air they breathe even under
the best sanitary regulations is far too
impure for their lungs. Often it is pos-
itively poisonous — a slow poison which
never makes itself fully manifest until
the child is a wreck. Keep the child
outdoors and away from books and
study. Much you can teach him, much
he will teach himself all gently, without
knowing it, of nature and nature's God,
just as the child is taught to walk or run
or play; but education in the academic
sense shun as you would the plague.
And the atmosphere must be pure
around it in the other sense. It must
be free from every kind of indelicacy

34

FRESH AIR

or coarseness. The most dangerous
man in the community is the one who
would pollute the stream of a child's
life. Whoever was responsible for the
saying that "boys will be boys" and a
young man "must sow his wild oats"
was perhaps guilty of a crime.

NOURISHING FOOD

IT is impossible to apply successfully
the principles of cultivation and selec-
tion of plants to human life if the hu-
man life does not, like the plant life,
have proper nourishment. First of all,
the child's digestion must be made
sound by sufficient, simple, well-bal-
anced food. But, you say, any one
should know this. True, and most peo-
ple do realize it in a certain sense; but

35

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

how many realize that upon the food the
child is fed in these first ten years
largely depends its moral future? I
once lived near a class of people who,
from religious belief, excluded all meat,
eggs, and milk from the dietary of their
children. They fed them vegetables
and the product of cereals. What re-
sult followed? The children were ane-
mic, unable to withstand disease,
quickly succumbed to illness. There
were no signs of vigor; they were al-
ways low in vitality. But that was not
all. They were frightfully depraved.
They were not properly fed; their ra-
tion was unbalanced.1 Nature re-

1 The request has often come to me to state what I
thought a "well-balanced" food especially for chil-
dren. We all need food which supplies the elements of
growth and repair and all, both old and young, must also
have foods which yield warmth and energy. Nearly all
foods contain both these elements though in greatly
36

NOURISHING FOOD

belled ; for she had not sufficient mater-
ial to perfect her higher development.

What we want in developing a new
plant, making it better in all ways than
any of its kind that have preceded it, is

varying proportions and usually far from the right ones
for growth and health unless a variety of foods are eaten
at each meal. Growing children need a greater propor-
tion of body-building foods, such as lean meats, fish,
milk, some vegetables and fruits. They are often fed
too great a proportion of sweet and starchy foods. A
certain proportion of these are absolutely necessary but
we all know the "starch babies" by their pale, fat,
flabby, characterless faces, lusterless eyes and general
lack of vitality. Less starchy foods and more fresh
meats with eggs, milk, some vegetables and fruits will
give more vitality, a better growth, greater intelligence,
better health and a better constitution, notwithstanding
the belief of some of my vegetarian friends to the con-
trary.

Children mostly fed on sweet and farinaceous foods
are also starved for the various salts and mineral ele-
ments. These must all be supplied especially ,to children
else they will certainly become victims of an unbal-
anced, unnatural, premature development and a short-
ening of life simply from starvation. Life, the builder,
must have the necessary materials or the structure must
be imperfect and incomplete.

L. B.

37

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

a splendid norm, not anything abnor-
mal. So we feed it from the soil, and
it feeds from the air by the aid of sun-
light and thus we make it a powerful
aid to man. It is dependent upon good
food. Upon good food for the child,
well-balanced food, depends good di-
gestion ; upon good digestion, with pure
air to keep the blood pure, depends the
nervous system. If you have the first
ten years of a boy's or a girl's life in
which to make them strong and sturdy
with normal nerves, splendid digestion,
and unimpaired lungs, you have a
healthy animal, ready for the heavier
burdens of study. Preserve beyond all
else as the priceless portion of a child
the integrity of the nervous system.
Upon this depends their success in life.
With the nervous system shattered,

38

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

what is life worth? Suppose you begin
the education, so-called, of your child
at, say, three or four, if he be unusually
bright , in the kindergarten. Keep
adding slowly and systematically, with
what I think the devil must enjoy as a
refined means of torment, to the bur-
den day by day. Keep on "educating"
him until he enters the primary school
at five, and push him to the uttermost
until he is ten. You have now laid
broad and deep the foundation; out-
raged nature may be left to take care
of the rest.

The integrity of your child's nervous
system, no matter what any so-called
educator may say, is thus impaired; he
can never again be what he would have
been had you taken him as the plant-
cultivator takes a plant, and for these
39

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

first ten precious years of his life had
fitted him for the future. Nothing else
is doing so much to break down the ner-
vous systems of Americans, not even
the insane rushing of maturer years, as
this over-crowding and cramming of
child-life before the age of ten. And
the mad haste of maturer years is the
legitimate result of the earlier strain.

NEITHER PLANT NOR CHILD TO BE
OVERFED

NOR should the child, any more than the
plant, be overfed, but more especially
should not be given an unbalanced ra-
tion. What happens when we overfeed
a plant, especially an unbalanced ration?
Its root system, its leaf system, its
trunk, its whole body, is impaired. It

40

OVERFEEDING

becomes engorged. Following this,
comes devitalization. It is open to at-
tacks of disease. It will easily be as-
sailed by fungous diseases and insect
pests. It rapidly and abnormally
grows onward to its death. So with a
child you can easily over-feed it on an
unbalanced ration, and the result will be
as disastrous as in the case of the plant.
The effect of such an unbalanced ration
as that fed to the children in the com-
munity I have referred to was to
shorten life; they developed prema-
turely, and died early.

Again some one says, But how can
the very poor feed their children plenty
of nutritious food?

I answer that the nation must pro-
tect itself. I mean by this that it is im-
perative, in order that the nation may

41

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

rise to its full powers and accomplish its
destiny, that the people who comprise
this nation must be normal physically.
It is imperative, in order that the nation
be normal, that the plants of the nation
from which it derives its life and with-
out which the nation dies must be sound.
All human life is absolutely dependent
upon plant life. If the plant life be in
any measure lowered through lack of
nourishment, with the inevitable lack of
ability to produce the best results, the
nation suffers. To the extent that any
portion of the people are physically
mentally or morally unfit, to that ex-
tent the nation is weakened.

Do not misunderstand me: I am not
advocating paternalism in any sense;
far from it. But is not the human race
worth as much care as the orchards, the

42

PROPER NOURISHMENT

farms, the cattle-ranges? I would so
work upon this great blending of races,
upon each individual factor in it, that
each factor should be called upon to do
its very best, be compelled to do its very
best, if it was shirking responsibility.
But in any great nation there must be a
large number who cannot do their best,
if I may use a contradictory term, who
do not seem able to rise to their oppor-
tunities and their possibilities. Already
you may see in our larger cities efforts
in a small way to help feed the very
poor. It can be done nationally as well
as municipally, and it can be done so
that no loss of self-respect will follow,
no encouragement and fostering of pov-
erty or laziness.

Then, too, there are the orphans and
the waifs; these must be taken into ac-

43

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

count. They must have wise, sane,
consistent state aid. I am opposed to
all sectarian aid. I would do away with
all asylums of all types for the indigent
under sectarian or private control. The
nation, or the commonwealth, should
take care of the unfortunate. It must
do this in a broad and liberal and sane
manner, if we are ever to accomplish the
end sought, to make this nation rise to
its possibilities. Only through the na-
tion, or State, can this work be done.
It must be done for self -protection.

DANGERS

IN the immediate future, possibly
within your life and mine, unques-
tionably within the life of this genera-
tion, what have we most to fear in
America from this vast crossing of
races? Not in the vicious adults who
are now with us, for they can be con-
trolled by law and force, but in the chil-
dren of these adults, when they have
grown and been trained to responsible
age in vice and crime, lies the danger.
We must begin now, to-day, the work
of training these children as they come.
Grant that it were possible that every

45

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

boy and girl born in the United States
during the next thirty years should be
kept in an atmosphere of crime to the
age of ten. The result would be too
appalling to contemplate. As they
came to adult years, vice would be ram-
pant, crime would go unpunished, all
evil would thrive, the nation would be
destroyed. Now, to the extent that we
leave the children of the poor and these
other unfortunates,— waifs and found-
lings,— to themselves and their evil sur-
roundings, to that extent we breed peril
for ourselves.

The only way to obviate this is abso-
lutely to cut loose from all precedent
and begin systematic State and Na-
tional aid, not next year, or a decade
from now, but to-day. Begin training
these outcasts, begin the cultivation of
46

DANGERS

them, if you will, much as we cultivate
the plants, in order that their lives may
be turned into right ways, in order that
the integrity of the state may be main-
tained. Rightly cultivated, these chil-
dren may be made a blessing to the
race ; trained in the wrong way, or neg-
lected entirely, they will become a curse
to the state.

ENVIRONMENT

LET us bring the application still nearer
home.

There is not a single desirable attri-
bute which, lacking in a plant, may not
be bred into it. Choose what improve-
ment you wish in a flower, a fruit, or a
tree, and by crossing, selection, cultiva-
tion, and persistence you can fix this de-
47

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

sirable trait irrevocably. Pick out any
trait you want in your child, granted
that he is a normal child, — I shall speak
of the abnormal later, — be it honesty,
fairness, purity, lovableness, industry,
thrift, what not. By surrounding this
child with sunshine from the sky and
your own heart, by giving the closest
communion with nature, by feeding
this child well-balanced, nutritious
food, by giving it all that is implied in
healthful environmental influences, and
by doing all in love, you can thus culti-
vate in the child and fix there for all its
life all of these traits. Naturally not al-
ways to the full in all cases at the begin-
ning of the work, for heredity will make
itself felt first, and, as in the plant un-
der improvement, there will be certain
strong tendencies to reversion to former

48

DANGERS

ancestral traits; but, in the main, with
the normal child, you can give him all
these traits by patiently, persistently,
guiding him in these early formative
years.

And, on the other side, give him foul
air to breathe, keep him in a dusty fac-
tory or an unwholesome school-room or
a crowded tenement up under the hot
roof ; keep him away from the sunshine,
take away from him music and laughter
and happy faces; cram his little brains
with so-called knowledge, all the more
deceptive and dangerous because made
so apparently adaptable to his young
mind ; let him have vicious associates in
his hours out of school, and at the age
of ten you have fixed in him the oppo-
site traits. He is on his way to the gal-
lows. You have perhaps seen a prairie
49

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

fire sweep through the tall grass across
a plain. Nothing can stand before it,
it must burn itself out. That is what
happens when you let the weeds grow
up in a child's life, and then set fire to
them by wrong environment.

THE ABNORMAL

BUT, some one asks, What will you do
with those who are abnormal? First, I
must repeat that the end will not be
reached at a bound. It will take years,
centuries, perhaps, to erect on this great
foundation we now have in America the
structure which I believe is to be built.
So we must begin to-day in our own
commonwealth, in our own city or town,
in our own family, with ourselves.
Here appears a child plainly not nor-

50

DANGERS

mal, what shall we do with him? Shall
we, as some have advocated, even from
Spartan days, hold that the weaklings
should be destroyed? No. In culti-
vating plant life, while we destroy much
that is unfit, we are constantly on the
lookout for what has been called the ab-
normal, that which springs apart in new
lines. How many plants are there in
the world to-day that were not in one
sense once abnormalities? No; it is the
influence of cultivation, of selection, of
surroundings, of environment, that
makes the change from the abnormal
to the normal. From the children we
are led to call abnormal may come, un-
der wise cultivation and training, splen-
did normal natures. A great force is
sometimes needed to change the aspect
of minerals and metals. Powerful
01

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

acids, great heat, electricity, mechani-
cal force, or some such influence, must
be brought to bear upon them. Less
potent influences will work a complete
change in plant-life. Mild heat, sun-
shine, the atmosphere, and greatly di-
luted chemicals, will all directly affect
the growth of the plant and the produc-
tion of fruits and flowers. And when
we come to animal life, especially in
man, we find that the force or influence
necessary to affect a transformation is
extremely slight. This is why environ-
ment plays such an important part in
the development of man.

In child-rearing, environment is
equally essential with heredity. Mind
you, I do not say that heredity is of no
consequence. It is the great factor,
and often makes environment almost

52

DANGERS

powerless. When certain hereditary ten-
dencies are almost indelibly ingrained,
environment will have a hard battle to
effect a change in the child; but that a
change can be wrought by the sur-
roundings we all know. The particu-
lar subject may at first be stubborn
against these influences, but repeated
application of the same modifying
forces in succeeding generations will at
last accomplish the desired object in the
child as it does in the plant.

No one shall say what great results
for the good of the race may not be at-
tained in the cultivation of abnormal
children, transforming them into nor-
mal ones.

58

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

THE PHYSICALLY WEAK

So also of the physically weak. I have
a plant in which I see wonderful possi-
bilities, but it is weak. Simply because
it is weak do I become discouraged and
say it can never be made strong, that it
would better be destroyed? Not at all;
it may possess other qualities of superla-
tive value. Even if it never becomes
as robust as its fellows, it may have a
tremendous influence. Because a child
is a weakling, should it be put out of the
way? Such a principle is monstrous.
Look over the long line of the great
men of the world, those who have
changed history and made history,
those who have helped the race
upward, — poets, painters, statesmen,

54

DANGERS

scientists, leaders of thought in every
department,— and you will find that
many of them have been phys-
ically weak. No, the theory of the an-
cients that the good of the state de-
manded the elimination of the physi-
cally weak was, perhaps, unwise. What
we should do is to strengthen the weak,
cultivate them as we cultivate plants,
build them up, make them the very best
they are capable of becoming.

THE MENTALLY DEFECTIVE

BUT with those who are mentally defec-
tive— ah, here is the hardest question of
all! — what shall be done with them?
Apparently fatally deficient, can they
ever be other than a burden? In the
case of plants in which all tendencies are

55

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

absolutely vicious there is only one
course — they must be destroyed. In
the case of human beings in whom the
light of reason does not burn, those
who, apparently, can never be other
than a burden, shall they be eliminated
from the race? Go to the mother of an
imbecile child and get your answer.
No; here the analogy must cease. I
shall not say that in the ideal state gen-
eral citizenship would not gain by the
absence of such classes, but where is the
man who would deal with such Spartan
rigor with the race? Besides all this,
in the light of the great progress now
being made in medical and surgical
skill, who shall say what now appar-
ently impossible cures may not be ef-
fected?

But it is as clear as sunlight that here,

56

DANGERS

as in the case of plants, constant culti-
vation and selection will do away with
all this, so that in the grander race of
the future these defectives will have be-
come permanently eliminated from the
race heredity. For these helpless un-
fortunates, as with those who are merely
unfortunate from environment, I
should enlist the best and broadest state
aid.

57

VI

MARRIAGE OF THE PHYSICALLY UNFIT

IT would, if possible, be best abso-
lutely to prohibit in every State in
the Union the marriage of the physi-
cally, mentally and morally unfit. If we
take a plant which we recognize as poi-
sonous and cross it with another which is
not poisonous and thus make the whole-
some plant evil, so that it menaces all
who come in contact with it, this is crim-
inal enough. But suppose we blend to-
gether two poisonous plants and make
a third even more virulent, a vegetable
degenerate, and set their evil descend-
ants adrift to multiply over the earth,

58

MARRIAGE OF PHYSICALLY UNFIT

are we not distinct foes to the race?
What, then, shall we say of two people
of absolutely defined physical impair-
ment who are allowed to marry and
rear children? It is a crime against the
state and every individual in the state.
And if these physically degenerate are
also morally degenerate, the crime be-
comes all the more appalling.

COUSINS

WHILE it seems clear now in the light
of recent studies that the children of
first cousins who have been reared under
different environmental influences and
who have remained separate from birth
until married are not likely to be im-
paired either mentally, morally or phys-
ically, though the second generation
59

will be more than likely to show retro-
gression, yet first cousin marriages
when they have been reared under simi-
lar environment should, no doubt, be
prohibited. The history of some of the
royal families of Europe, where inter-
marrying, with its fatal results, has so
long prevailed, should be sufficient
though in these cases other baneful in-
fluences have no doubt added their
shadow to the picture.

TEN GENERATIONS

BUT let us take a still closer view of the
subject. Suppose it were possible to
select say, a dozen normal families, the
result of some one of the many blend-
ings of these native and foreign stocks,
and let them live by themselves, so far
60

TEN GENERATIONS

as the application of the principles I
have been speaking of are concerned,
though not by any means removed from
the general influence? of the state. Let
them have, if you will, ideal conditions
for working out these principles, and
let them be solemnly bound to the de-
velopment of these principles — what
can be done?

In plant cultivation, under normal
conditions, from six to ten generations
are generally sufficient to fix the de-
scendants of the parent plants in their
new ways. Sufficient time in all cases
must elapse so that the descendants will
not revert to some former condition of
inefficiency. When once stability is se-
cured, usually, as indicated, in from six
to ten generations, the plant may then
be counted upon to go forward in its
61

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

new life as though the old lives of its
ancestors had never been. This, among
plants, will be by the end of from five
to ten generations, varying according
to the plant's character — its pliability
or stubbornness. I do not say that lack
of care and nourishment thereafter will
not have a demoralizing influence, for
no power can prevent a plant from be-
coming again part wild if left to itself
through many generations, but even
here it will probably become wild along
the lines of its new life, not by any
means necessarily along ancestral lines.
If, then, we could have these twelve
families under ideal conditions where
these principles could be carried out un-
swervingly, we could accomplish more
for the race in ten generations than can
now be accomplished in a hundred thou-

TEN GENERATIONS

sand years. Ten generations of human
life should be ample to fix any desired
attribute. This is absolutely clear.
There is neither theory nor speculation.
Given the fact that the most sensitive
material in all the world upon which to
work is the nature of a little child, given
ideal conditions under which to work
upon this nature, and the end desired
will as certainly come as it comes in the
cultivation of the plant. There will be
this difference, however, that it will be
immeasurably easier to produce and fix
any desired traits in the child than in
the plant, though, of course, a plant
may be said to be a harp with a few
strings as compared with a child.

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

THE PERSONAL ELEMENT

BUT some one says, You fail to take
into account the personal element, the
sovereign will of the human being, its
power of determining for itself.

By no means; I give full weight to
this. But the most stubborn and wilful
nature in the world is not that of a
child. I have dealt with millions of
plants, have worked with them for
many years, have studied them with the
deepest interest from all sides of their
lives. The most stubborn living thing
in this world, the most difficult to
swerve, is a plant once fixed in certain
habits — habits which have been intensi-
fied and have been growing stronger
and stronger upon it by repetition

64

PERSONAL ELEMENT

through thousands and thousands of
years. Remember that this plant has
preserved its individuality all through
the ages ; perhaps it is one which can be
traced backward through eons of time
in the very rocks themselves, never hav-
ing varied to any great extent in all
these vast periods. Do you suppose,
after all these ages of repetition, the
plant does not become possessed of a
will, if you so choose to call it, of unpar-
alleled tenacity? Indeed, there are
plants, like certain of the palms, so per-
sistent that no human power has yet
been able to change them. The human
will is a weak thing beside the will of a
plant. But see how this whole plant's
lifelong stubbornness is broken simply
by blending a new life with it, making,
by crossing, a complete and powerful

5 65

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

change in its life. Then when the break
comes, fix it by these generations of pa-
tient supervision and selection, and the
new plant sets out upon its new way
never again to return to the old, its
tenacious will broken and changed at
last.

When it comes to so sensitive and pli-
able a thing as the nature of a child, the
problem becomes vastly easier.

66

VII

HEREDITY— PREDESTINATION-
TRAINING

THERE is no such thing in the world,
there never has been such a thing,
as a predestined child— predestined for
heaven or hell. Men have taught such
things in the past, there may be now
those who account for certain manifes-
tations on this belief, just as there may
be those who in the presence of some
hopelessly vicious man hold to the view,
whether they express it or not, of total
depravity. But even total depravity
never existed in a human being, never
can exist in one any more than it can ex-
67

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

ist in a plant. Heredity means much,
but what is heredity? Not some hide-
ous ancestral specter forever crossing
the path of a human being. Heredity
is simply the sum of all the effects of all
the environments of all past genera-
tions on the responsive, ever-moving
life forces. There is no doubt that if a
child with a vicious temper be placed in
an environment of peace and quiet the
temper will change. Put a boy born of
gentle white parents among Indians
and he will grow up like an Indian. Let
the child born of criminal parents have
a setting of morality, integrity, and
love, and the chances are that he will
not grow into a criminal, but into an
upright man. I do not say, of course,
that heredity will not sometimes assert
itself. When the criminal instinct
68

HEREDITY

crops out in a person, it might appear
as if environment were leveled to the
ground; but in succeeding generations
the effect of constant higher environ-
ment will not fail to become fixed.

Apply to the descendants of these
twelve families throughout three hun-
dred years the principles I have set
forth, and the reformation and regener-
ation of the world, their particular
world, will have been effected. Apply
these principles now, to-day, not wait-
ing for the end of these three hundred
years, not waiting, indeed, for any mil-
lennium to come, but make the millen-
nium, and see what splendid results will
follow. Not the ample results of the
larger period, to be sure, for with the
human life, as with the plant life, it re-
quires these several generations to fix
69

TRAINING QF THE HUMAN PLANT

new characteristics or to intensify old
ones. But narrow it still more, apply
these principles to a single family, — in-
deed, still closer, to a single child, your
child it may be,— and see what the re-
sults will be.

But remember that just as there
must be in plant cultivation great pa-
tience, unswerving devotion to the
truth, the highest motive, absolute hon-
esty, unchanging love, so must it be in
the cultivation of a child. If it be
worth while to spend ten years upon the
ennoblement of a plant, be it fruit, tree,
or flower, is it not worth while to spend
ten years upon a child in this precious
formative period, fitting it for the place
it is to occupy in the world? Is not a
child's life vastly more precious than the
life of a plant? Under the old order of
70

TRAINING

things plants kept on in their course
largely uninfluenced in any new direc-
tion. The plant-breeder changes their
lives to make them better than they ever
were before. Here in America, in the
midst of this vast crossing of species, we
have an unparalleled opportunity to
work upon these sensitive human na-
tures. We may surround them with
right influences. We may steady them
in right ways of living. We may bring
to bear upon them, just as we do upon
plants, the influence of light and air, of
sunshine and abundant, well-balanced
food. We may give them music and
laughter. We may teach them as we
teach the plants to be sturdy and self-
reliant. We may be honest with them,
as we are obliged to be honest with
plants. We may break up this cruel
71

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

educational articulation which connects
the child in the kindergarten with the
graduate of the university while there
goes on from year to year an unin-
terrupted system of cramming, an
uninterrupted mental strain upon the
child, until the integrity of its nervous
system may be destroyed and its life
impaired.

I may only refer to that mysterious
prenatal period, and say that even here
we should begin our work, throwing
around the mothers of the race every
possible loving, helpful, and ennobling
influence ; for in the doubly sacred time
before the birth of a child lies, far more
than we can possibly know, the hope of
the future of this ideal race which is
coming upon this earth if we and our
descendants will it so to be.
72

TRAINING

Man has by no means reached the ul-
timate. The fittest has not yet arrived.
In the process of elimination the weaker
must fail, but the battle has changed its
base from brute force to mental integ-
rity. We now have what are popularly
known as five senses, but there are men
of strong minds whose reasoning has
rarely been at fault and who are coldly
scientific in their methods, who attest to
the possibility of yet developing a sixth
sense. Who is he who can say man will
not develop new senses as evolution ad-
vances? Psychology is now studied in
most of the higher institutions of learn-
ing throughout the country, and that
study will lead to a greater knowledge
of these subjects. The man of the fu-
ture ages will prove a somewhat differ-
ent order of being from that of the pres-
73

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT
ent. He may look upon us as we to-
day look upon our ancestors.

Statistics show many things to make
us pause, but, after all, the only right
and proper point of view is that of the
optimist. The time will come when in-
sanity will be reduced, suicides and
murders will be greatly diminished, and
man will become a being of fewer men-
tal troubles and bodily ills. Whenever
you have a nation in which there is no
variation, there is comparatively little
insanity or crime, or exalted morality
or genius. Here in America, where the
variation is greatest, statistics show a
greater percentage of all these varia-
tions.

As time goes on in its endless and
ceaseless course, environment must
crystallize the American nation; its
74

TRAINING

varying elements will become unified,
and the weeding-out process will, by the
means indicated in this paper, by selec-
tion and environmental influences, leave
the finest human product ever known.
The transcendent qualities which are
placed in plants will have their analo-
gies in the noble composite, the Ameri-
can of the future.

VIII

GROWTH

GROWTH is a vital process— an evo-
lution— a marshaling of vagrant
unorganized forces into definite forms
of beauty, harmony and utility. Growth
in some form is about all that we ever
take any interest in; it expresses about
everything of value to us. Growth in
its more simple or most marvelously
complicated forms is the architect of
beauty, the inspiration of poetry, the
builder and sustainer of life, for life it-
self is only growth, an ever-changing
movement toward some object or ideal.
Wherever life is found, there, also, is
76

GROWTH

growth in some direction. The end of
growth is the beginning of decay.

Growth within, is health, content and
happiness, and growing things without
stimulate and enhance growth within.
Whose pulses are not hastened, and who
is not filled with joy when in Earth's
long circling swing around our great
dynamo the Sun, the point is reached
where chilling, blistering frosts are ex-
changed for warmth and growth ! When
the flowers and grasses on the warm
hillsides gleefully hasten up through
the soft wet soil, or later when ferns,
meadow rues and trilliums thrilled with
awakened life, crack through and push up
the loose mellow earth in small mounds
— little volcanoes of growth; all these
variously organized life forces are ex-
pressing themselves each in its own
77

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

specific way. Each so-called species,
each individual has something within
itself which we call heredity — a general
tendency to reproduce itself in form
and habits somewhat definitely after its
own kind.

NEW SPECIES

MOST of the ancient and even a large
part of modern students of plant and
animal life have held that their so-called
true species never varied to any great
extent, at least never varied from the
standard type sufficiently to form what
could scientifically be called a new spe-
cies. Under this view the word hered-
ity has had a very indefinite meaning
when used in conjunction with environ-
ment; and a never-ending uncertainty
78

GROWTH

has always been apparent as to their rel-
ative power in molding individual life.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

WHEN the great rivers of life, which we
now see, commenced on this planet they
did not at once leap into existence with
all their present complicated combina-
tions of forces and motions; all were
very insignificant; their slender courses,
though simple, were devious and uncer-
tain, at first lacking all the wonderfully
varied but slowly acquired adaptations
to environment that have come with the
ages; all had many obstacles to over-
come, many things to learn; — and for
long ages were able to respond only to
the more powerful or long-continued
action of external forces. Many of
79

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

these frail life streams in the long
race down the ages were snuffed out by
unfavorable surroundings, unfavorable
heredity, or the combination and inter-
action of both; others more successful
have lived to be our contemporaries and
to-day the process is still unchanged.

If a race has not acquired and stored
among its hereditary tendencies suffi-
cient perseverance and adaptability to
meet all the changes to which it must
always be subjected by its ever-chang-
ing environment, it will be left behind
and finally destroyed, outstripped by
races better equipped for the fray.

80

IX

ENVIRONMENT THE ARCHITECT OF
HEREDITY

HEREDITY is not the dark specter
which some people have thought
—merciless and unchangeable, the em-
bodiment of Fate itself. This dark,
pessimistic belief which tinges even the
literature of to-day comes, no doubt,
from the general lack of knowledge of
the laws governing the interaction of
these two ever-present forces of hered-
ity and environment wherever there is
life.

My own studies have led me to be as-
sured that heredity is only the sum of

6 81

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

all past environment, in other words en-
vironment is the architect of heredity;
and I am assured of another fact: ac-
quired characters are transmitted and —
even further — that all characters which
are transmitted have been acquired,
not necessarily at once in a dy-
namic or visible form, but as an increas-
ing latent force ready to appear as a
tangible character when by long-contin-
ued natural or artificial repetition any
specific tendency has become inherent,
inbred, or "fixed," as we call it.

We may compare this sum of the life
forces, which we call heredity, to the
character of a sensitive plate in the cam-
era. Outside pictures impress them-
selves more or less distinctly on the sen-
sitive plate according to their position,
intensity, and the number of times the

82

ENVIRONMENT

plate has been exposed to the objects
(environments) in the same relative po-
sition; all impressions are recorded.
Old ones fade from immediate con-
sciousness, but each has written a per-
manent record. Stored within heredity
are all joys, sorrows, loves, hates, music,
art, temples, palaces, pyramids, hovels,
kings, queens, paupers, bards, proph-
ets and philosophers, oceans, caves,
volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, wars, tri-
umphs, defeats, reverence, courage, wis-
dom, virtue, love and beauty, time,
space, and all the mysteries of the uni-
verse. The appropriate environments
will bring out and intensify all these
general human hereditary experiences
and quicken them again into life and
action, thus modifying for good or evil
character — heredity — destiny.
83

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

REPETITION

REPETITION is the best means of im-
pressing any one point on the human
understanding; it is also the means
which we employ to train animals to do
as we wish, and by just the same pro-
cess we impress plant life. By repeti-
tion we fix any tendency, and the more
times any unusual environment is re-
peated the more indelibly will the re-
sultant tendencies be fixed in plant, ani-
mal, or man, until, if repeated often
enough in any certain direction, the
habits become so fixed and inherent in
heredity that it will require many repe-
titions of an opposite nature to efface
them.

ENVIRONMENT
APPLICATION TO CHILD LIFE

WHAT possibilities this view opens up
in the culture and development of the
most sensitive and most precious of all
lives which ever come under our care
and culture — child life!

Can we hope for normal, healthy,
happy children if they are constantly in
ugly environment? Are we not rea-
sonably sure that these conditions will
almost swamp a well-balanced normal
heredity and utterly overthrow and de-
stroy a weak though otherwise good
one?

We are learning that child life is far
more sensitive to impressions of any
kind than we had ever before realized,
and it is certain that this wonderful sen-
sitiveness and ready adaptability has

7 85

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

not as yet by any means been put to its
best possible use in child culture — either
in the home or the school — and though
all must admire our great educational
system, yet no well-informed person
need be told that it is not perfect.

86

X

CHARACTER

IT ir TE are a garrulous people and too
V V often forget, or do not know,
that the heart as well as the head should
receive its full share of culture. Much
of our education has been that of the
parrot; children's minds are too often
crowded with rules and words. Edu-
cation of the intellect has its place, but
is injurious, unnatural, and unbalanced
unless in addition to cultivating the
memory and reason we educate the
heart also in the truest sense. A well-
balanced character should always be
the object and aim of all education.
87

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

A perfect system of education can
never be attained because education
is preparing one for the environment
expected, and conditions change with
time and place. There is too much
striving to be consistent rather than
trying to be right. We must learn
that what we call character is heredity
and environment in combination, and
heredity being only stored environment
our duty and our privilege is to make
the stored environment of the best
quality ; in this way character is not only
improved in the individual but the de-
sired qualities are added to heredity to
have their influence in guiding the
slightly but surely changed heredities of
succeeding generations.

CHARACTER

SUCCESS

COLD mathematical intellect unaccom-
panied by a heart for the philosophic,
idealistic, and poetic side of nature
is like a locomotive well made but of
no practical value without fire and
steam; a good knowledge of language,
history, geography, mathematics, chem-
istry, botany, astronomy, geology, etc.,
is of some importance, but far more so
is the knowledge that all true success in
life depends on integrity; that health,
peace, happiness, and content, all come
with heartily accepting and daily living
by the "Golden Rule"; that dollars,
though of great importance and value,
do not necessarily make one wealthy;
that a loving devotion to truth is a nor-
89

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

mal indication of physical and mental
health; that hypocrisy and deceit are
only forms of debility, mental imbecil-
ity and bodily disease, and that the
knowledge and ability to perform use-
ful, honest labor of any kind is of infin-
itely more importance and value than
all the so-called "culture" of the schools,
which too often turn out nervous pedan-
tic victims of unbalanced education with
plenty of words but with no intuitive
ability to grasp, digest, assimilate and
make use of the environment which they
are compelled each day to meet and to
conquer or be conquered.

Any form of education which leaves
one less able to meet every-day emer-
gencies and occurrences is unbalanced
and vicious, and will lead any people
to destruction.

90

CHARACTER

Every child should have mud pies,
grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles,
frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild
strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to
climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies,
woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, var-
ious animals to pet, hay-fields, pine-
cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes,
huckleberries and hornets; and any
child who has been deprived of these has
been deprived of the best part of his ed-
ucation.

By being well acquainted with all
these they come into most intimate har-
mony with nature, whose lessons are, of
course, natural and wholesome.

A fragrant beehive or a plump,

healthy hornet's nest in good running

order often become object lessons of

some importance. The inhabitants can

91

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

give the child pointed lessons in punc-
tuation as well as caution and some of
the limitations as well as the grand pos-
sibilities of life ; and by even a brief ex-
perience with a good patch of healthy
nettles, the same lesson will be still fur-
ther impressed upon them. And thus
by each new experience with homely
natural objects the child learns self-re-
spect and also to respect the objects and
forces which must be met.

XI

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

<TT"NOWLEDGE is Power," but it re-
XV quires to be combined with wis-
dom to become useful. The funda-
mental principles of education should
be the subject of earnest scientific inves-
tigation, but this investigation should
be broad, including not only the theat-
rical, wordy, memorizing, compiling
methods, but should also include all the
causes which tend to produce men and
women with sane well-balanced char-
acters.

We must learn that any person who
will not accept what he knows to be
93

truth, for the very love of truth alone,
is very definitely undermining his men-
tal integrity. It will be observed that
the mind of such a person gradually
stops growing, for, being constantly
hedged in and cropped here and there,
it soon learns to respect artificial fences
more than freedom for growth. You
have not been a very close observer of
such men if you have not seen them
shrivel, become commonplace, mean,
without influence, without friends and
the enthusiasm of youth and growth,
like a tree covered with fungus, the fo-
liage diseased, and the life gone out of
the heart with dry rot and indelibly
marked for destruction — dead, but not
yet handed over to the undertaker.

The man or the woman who moves the
earth, who is master rather than the
94

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

victim of fate, has strong feelings well
in hand — a vigilant engineer at the
throttle.

Education which makes us lazier and
more helpless is of no use. Leaders use
the power within ; it should give the best
organized thought and experience of
men through all the ages of the past.
By it we should learn that it is not nec-
essary to be selfish in order to succeed.
If you happen to get a new idea don't
build a barbed wire fence around it and
label it yours. By giving your best
thoughts freely others will come to you
so freely that you will soon never think
of fencing them in. Thoughts refuse to
climb barbed wire fences to reach any-
body.

By placing ourselves in harmony and
cooperation with the main high poten-
95

TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT

tial line of human progress and welfare
we receive the benefit of strong mag-
netic induction currents. But by plac-
ing our life energies at right angles to
it we soon find ourselves on a low-feed
induction current, thus losing the help
and support which should be ours.

Straightforward honesty always pays
better dividends than zigzag policy.
It gives one individuality, self-respect,
and power to take the initiative, sav-
ing all the trouble of constant tacking
to catch the popular breeze. Each hu-
man being is like a steamship, endowed
with a tremendous power. The fires of
life develop a pressure of steam which,
well disciplined, leads to happiness for
ourselves and others; or it may lead
only to pain and destruction.

To guide these energies is the work
96

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

of true education. Education of rules
and words only for polish and public
opinion is of the past. The education
of the present and future is to guide
these energies through wind and wave
straight to the port desired. Educa-
tion gives no one any new force. It
can only discipline nature's energies to
develop in natural and useful directions
so that the voyage of life may be a use-
ful and happy one — so that life may not
be blasted or completely cut off before
thought and experience have ripened
into useful fruit.

When the love of truth for truth's
sake — this poetic idealism, this intui-
tive perception, this growth from
within — has been awakened and culti-
vated, thoughts live and are transmitted
into endless forms of beauty and utility;
97

TRAINING PF THE HUMAN PLANT

but to receive this new growth we must
cultivate a sturdy self-respect, we must
break away from the mere petrified
word-pictures of others and cultivate
the "still small voice" within by which
we become strong in individual thought
and quick in action, not cropped,
hedged and distorted by outward, triv-
ial forms, fads and fancies. Every
great man or woman is at heart a poet,
and all must listen long to the harmonies
of Nature before they can make transla-
tions from her infinite resources through
their own ideals into creations of beauty
in words, forms, colors, or sounds.
Mathematical details are invaluable, the
compilation method is beyond re-
proach; intellectually we may know
many things, but they will never be of
any great value toward a normal
98

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

growth unless there is an inward awak-
ening, an intuitive grasp, an impelling
personal force which digests, assimilates
and individualizes. This intuitive con-
sciousness, combined with extensive
practical knowledge and "horse sense,"
has always been the motive power of all
those who have for all time left the hu-
man race rich with legacies of useful
thought, with ripening harvests of free-
dom and with ever-increasing stores of
wisdom and happiness. We are now
standing upon the threshold of new
methods and new discoveries which shall
give us imperial dominion.

99

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